THE WAR LORD

CHUCKS NORMAN CONQUEST

Allan Bryce looks back on The War Lord, one of the finest historical adventure films ever made, which dramatises with uncommon intelligence and integrity the brutality, difficulties and injustices of the Middle Ages…

By the time Charlton Heston got around to making The War Lord (1965), an impressive costume drama set in 11th-century France, he was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood. Not surprising really. His handsome features were seemingly chiselled in stone, and so he was first on everyone’s casting list when it came to playing bigger-than-life historical types.

Charlton, or Chuck as he was known to his mates was especially popular in Biblical epics like The Ten Commandments (1956), where he parted the Red Sea as Moses, and Ben- Hur (1959), where his title character drove a mean chariot. It also seemed to be written into his contracts that he would be obliged to show his bare chest at some stage in the proceedings. Yeah Judah, if thou have it, thou must flaunt it. By the way, I wasn’t a fan, of that chariot race flick, loved Ben, not so keen on Hur.

Such was Heston’s clout in the business that studios and producers bent over backwards to please him. After he made El Cid (1961) alongside Sophia Loren, producer Samuel Bronston planned to reunite him with Loren in his epic movie The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964). The set for the Forum Romanum was being built when Heston decided he didn’t like the script after all, and wanted to make 55 Days at Peking (1963) instead. Bronston immediately changed his filming schedule and tore down acres of already-constructed, unused Roman sets.

To be fair to Chuck though, he did use his elevated position in the industry to support the likes of Sam Peckinpah and Orson Welles (who directed and starred with him in the 1958 masterpiece Touch of Evil) in personal projects that didn’t always work out. In Peckinpah’s case Major Dundee was a low point.